Oakland manager Bob Melvin said he didn’t believe there was any link to the barrage of swings Cespedes took in Monday’s derby in New York’s Citi Field and the injury that shut him down Friday.

The A’s don’t know if Cespedes will be back in the lineup Saturday. The left fielder declined to talk as is usual when injuries are the subject. He was walking around the clubhouse with a sizable packet of ice wrapped around his wrist.

“I wouldn’t think so,” Melvin said when asked if Cespedes’ injury is connected to the Home Run Derby. “You would have thought he would have felt it then.”

Cespedes took batting practice with the rest of the team before the game, when he apparently began feeling discomfort. He was already in the lineup, but when he took some extra swings in the batting cage, the pain was sufficient that Melvin said the A’s took him out of the lineup as a precaution.

With no Cespedes in the lineup, the A’s did almost nothing against Angels starter Jered Weaver, who stretched his streak of scoreless innings against Oakland to 24﻿2/3 with 6﻿2/3 shutout innings. He’s allowed the A’s one run in 37﻿1/3 innings the last two years.

Griffin lasted just five innings and gave up four runs, one on a first-inning RBI double by Josh Hamilton and three more on solo homers by Albert Pujols in the third and Erick Aybar and Mike Trout in the fifth.

That gets Griffin to 21 homers allowed this season, the third-highest total in the American League. Of those, 16 have come with no one on base.

Catcher John Jaso wasn’t aware of the overwhelming percentage of solo homers, but he suggested Griffin’s curve, his out pitch, might be a factor.

“That’s what gets hitters out,” Jaso said. “A lot of the homers have come on 2-2 and 3-2. When there’s no one on base, he’s not going to throw his curve much in that situation. When there’s someone on, he will.”

Griffin said he wasn’t disappointed in the way he pitched, although he wasn’t crazy about the results. He said Aybar’s homer came on “a pitch that almost hit him,” and the Trout homer came when Griffin tried to use a changeup on which he’d struck out Trout earlier but “didn’t get it down enough.”

In all, it wasn’t a great game for the A’s, who seemed out of sorts after four days off at the All-Star break. Melvin said the team “looked out of sync.”

“It’s always a surprise for me when we look out of sync,” he said. “We should be ready to play the game.”

The A’s got two-plus innings of shutout relief from Sonny Gray, but they won’t be seeing any of that for a while. Gray was told after the game that he was being sent down to make room on the roster for Saturday’s starting pitcher, Dan Straily.

The A’s, who still hold a two-game lead in the American League West with Texas also having lost, were cold offensively before the break, and Friday did nothing to change that. The A’s have scored 13 runs total in their last seven games, never more than three runs in any one game. The Oakland batting average during that stretch is .167.

Jaso was picked off first base to end a rally threat in the fifth. He said it was “stupid” and said he wasn’t certain he’d ever been picked off before.

Left-hander Tommy Milone and right-hander Jarrod Parker will be the members of the rotation getting the most time off between starts thanks to the All-Star break. Milone, who last pitched July 10, will get 11 days off before starting Monday’s game in Houston. Parker, who last pitched July 12 and who has been dealing with a hamstring injury, throws Tuesday after 10 days off.

Pitcher Brett Anderson is scheduled to join the A’s in Houston during their three-game series that starts Monday. If all goes well, the left-hander will test just how healed his right foot is with a bullpen session in front of Melvin and pitching coach Curt Young. Anderson, recovering from a stress fracture, tweeted that he’s been able to throw all of his pitches without pain.

Oakland’s team ERA of 3.45 in night games is the best mark in the A.L.

John Hickey is a sports reporter for the Bay Area News Group who returned to the organization in 2013 to cover the A's, a team he'd covered previously from 1986-1999. In between he covered the Mariners in Seattle for 13 seasons.

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